I was sitting at my desk fighting to stay awake when the loud thud of another falling stack of manila folders snapped me to full consciousness. It took me a second to remember precisely where I was, and when the realization hit I sighed bitterly in the back of my throat.
"Everything o.k. Mr. Moran?"
The pimply face of our summer intern, James, filled my vision momentarily before I glanced away and down at what he had brought me.
"Fine, James, just fine..." I replied in a voice devoid of enthusiasm.
"Perk up! It's almost Friday."
I couldn't form a reply before he was gone, pushing his steel cart stacked high with more matching folders down the long row of cubicles that stretched away from mine.
This hadn't been what I had been expecting when I was recruited right of college three years before by the consulting firm of Hathaway and Norris. The young executive I had interviewed with had promised me rapid advancement, and challenging assignments abroad bringing the latest technological innovations to our customers. Though I had fully expected to have to earn my stripes, I had imagined the apprenticeship period wouldn't last too long, and I would be on my way to doing truly meaningful work. That was before it became clear that what the company was really interested in was burying folks like me in a rat warren of identical cubbyholes, awash in the daily tedium of inputting old paper files into a fancy new data tracking system they called Icarus One.
The promises made to us new hires had faded into obscurity as the months rolled past. I kept the faith at first, figuring this was just a weaning out period, and that once they saw who was committed to being here, they would lift me out of this world of dull data entry, and start asking me to use the skills I had spent four years of university study accruing. That had yet to happen, and so far I had no reason to believe it ever would. The more I watched and learned the more it seemed the only people getting moved up were the ones that had the good fortune to attend a prestigious college, Ivy league for instance, while those of us that had to muddle through in a state school were ignored.
My phone rang, and I jolted back in my seat in surprise. I could count on one hand the number of phone calls I had received so far that week, and two of them had been wrong numbers.
"Hello? This is Peter Moran," I said trying to put some life into my voice.
"Moran! I need to see you. Come to my office."
The authoritative voice on the other end of the line belonged to my current supervisor, Mr. Jackson Clarke. In the past three years, I had reported to four different leads; all of them just treading water until they were tabbed for bigger and better things. Mr. Clarke was no different from the ones that had come before; his level of interest in those of us under him primarily focused on making sure we stayed busy and didn't make any waves. Still, he had never asked to see me before, so a small, hopeful flame ignited in my heart that maybe this time I was going to be given something of substance to do.
Mr. Clarke's office was in the far corner of the floor. I knocked once, and he called for me to enter in his usual grumpy tone.
"You wanted to see me, Mr. Clarke?"
"Sit down, Moran."
I dropped into the guest chair on the opposite side of the disorganized trash heap that Mr. Clarke called a desk. I swear, it was piled so high with paper stacks I could barely find an aisle between them to look my boss in the face.
"I have a special assignment for you, Moran," he began.
My heart sped up in my chest. Perhaps this was it! The culmination of years of patience finally paying off.
"Whatever I can do to help, Boss."
He scowled at me for interrupting, his florid face going even redder than usual as his bushy, dark eyebrows knit together in a frown.
"Listen, Moran. This is very simple. You know tonight is Bob Ryan's retirement party at the Four Seasons right?"
Bob Ryan had been our division head when I arrived, a twenty-five-year company man, he had supposedly been one of the first people hired when the company had been founded.
"Yes, Sir. I bought a new suit just for the event," I said, throwing in that last bit to make it appear that I was excited about going. In reality, I had never spoken to Bob Ryan other than he grunted at me in the hallway once when I wished him a Merry Christmas my first year. I could have cared less about his retirement.
Again, Mr. Clarke just stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language and pressed on.
I should have known by now that he was from the "Employee's are to be seen and not heard from school."
"Anyway. We had a special commemorative plaque done up for him that arrived today, but the frame was cracked in shipment, and there is no time to order a replacement. I need you to run to Warners and pick up a new frame. You can draw money from petty cash to pay for it, Bob Johnson down in accounting knows you're coming."
I tried not to let my face fall.
This was not the break I was hoping for, instead of climbing on a plane to take on a challenging assignment at a high-end client I was being turned into a glorified errand boy.
"You can run over there on your lunch hour," he added as an afterthought.
"Mr. Clarke? Warners is quite a ways from here it would take me more than an hour to drive there and another to get back," I pointed out.
He had started to look back down at his desk in a dismissive gesture, but my small objection drew his attention back to me for a brief moment.
Sighing and rubbing his jaw he finally answered, "Fine, you can have the rest of the afternoon off, but that plaque better be at the banquet tonight shining like a new penny."
I left his office with the heavy wood box containing the plaque with the broken frame under my arm and trudged back to my cubicle. Kirby Wannamaker, another of the low-level employees in my section, was sitting in my guest chair when I arrived reading mail on his phone.
"Hey, Kirby."
"Just the man I wanted to see! What's that? Mr. Clarke give you a present?"
"Not hardly. It's the retirement plaque for Bob Ryan's shindig tonight. The frames busted, and they want me to go to Warners and get a new one."
"Warners? Fancy place...It's like an antique gift shop for the upper crust. I'm amazed they will let your happy ass in the front door."
"What did you need, Kirby?"
"I was hoping I could get a lift to the banquet tonight? My cars in the shop."
"I suppose," I said, "Just you or are you bringing a date?"
"I'm purely stag tonight. Will you be bringing Lucille with you?"
"No, she is out of town...again," I replied.
